Kids say the darndest things: how my kids help my writing

They give me great inspiration for finding creative turns of phrase. As a website copywriter it’s easy to get distracted into finding keyword placement opportunities and forget about readability. Our friends at Google are rewarding good content, so it’s more important than ever to make sure my writing is fresh, original and, well, good quality.

Here’s some recent examples of clever comments from my kids that I wish I’d coined myself:

Recently a house was demolished in our street, a subject of great fascination and intrigue. It’s now referred to as ‘the dead house’.

How’s this for a corker of an insult? ‘We need to go to the supermarket. Jessica needs a new face.’ That’s going in the vault.

Me: What’s the magic word? Alice: Abracadabra!

My youngest reminds me of the benefits of simplicity. She wants to be lifted—she shouts ‘up!’ She wants milk—she pulls on the fridge door shouting ‘milk, milk, milk!’ That’s some good keyword repetition. Mind you, she doesn’t get anything without adding saying please.

Kids also ask why ten zillion times a day till I want to pull my hair out frequently.

It reminds me to ask why a lot too. Asking my clients gets me a much better brief. I learned this on a creative training session and it’s often mentioned as a Japanese technique of asking why five times to get to the root of the problem.

For example, my questions to a new client about her business, cufflinks for women (launching soon):

Why are you launching this business? To tap into a growing market

Why is it a growing market? Because French cuffs are increasing in popularity on women

Why are they becoming popular? More stores are stocking French cuffs shirts for women and European designers and magazines are promoting this look

By asking these questions, I managed to get a lot more information from the client about the trend for French cuffs on women.

So, to summarise:

Look to kids for the creative way they speak and combine unusual words